I saw you.
Ryan had an infectious laugh. Most who knew him have mentioned his laugh and beautiful smile. I will miss seeing his smile and the slight dimples that would appear on his cheeks if you were lucky enough to see him smile big. I will miss his laugh that would often fill a room and create the need for others to reciprocate it. Mostly, I will miss his hugs. He wasn’t a side hugger. He hugged you strong, face to face, for a long time. He didn’t fool around with his hugs. If he truly cared about you, his hugs were the way he expressed it.
He wasn’t easily impressed. He wasn’t easily intimidated either. Not the Ryan I knew. He just wanted to be happy. Moreover, he wanted his loved ones to be happy. He didn’t try to impress others by how much he knew. I clearly remember this one time, when he was driving us to buy dinner for the family, and he said, out of the blue, that he knew he wasn’t smart – he quickly added that he was not as smart as he knew he could be. He went on to say that he knew that by reading he could improve his vocabulary. I told him that was cool, but why try to improve your vocabulary when others might not understand them fancy words you learned. We laughed loud and hard. But, I went on and encouraged him to read more and to learn as much as he could but to always be true to himself. I tried to impress upon him to be genuine because if his motives for learning something were to impress others or to get their approval, then he should question the character of those people.
He was not perfect, but neither am I. He just loved genuinely and sometimes he tripped. I, too, have tripped in trying to express my love and other emotions to my loved ones.
He had thoughts that none of us knew about and thoughts that he probably couldn’t express or understand. In the end, Ryan was just too kind, mindful, forgiving, and caring for this often too cruel world. Maybe he was affected by pathogenic beliefs. These are a belief system that interferes with our way of dealing with those older than us or in higher authority. It unfairly teaches us to respect our elders no matter what, and it teaches us to not question those with authority. The pathogenic belief system is indirectly taught and learned early in one’s life and mostly plagues minorities – especially Hispanics. The system clouds a person’s ability to properly express or defend himself. You know how as children our parents usually taught us to show respect because they said so: "you better show respect because I said so" ... "you be nice to tia Maria even when she pinches your cheeks too hard because she's getting old" or "don't talk back to tio Jose even when he calls you a cabron!" Yeah, these things we're taught are silly as I recall them, but they have been scientifically proven to be damaging to a young person, enough that he carries that negative learning system into adulthood with no positive coping mechanism. You let those in authority and power mistreat you because that's what mami and papi taught me when they said I had to be respectful of my elders. All of this makes a person's emotions fester and show up often in negative ways. We must do better in the area of mental health . Look and listen. Never look and judge. It just takes 5 minutes for a person to decide to do something irreparable, but it takes less time to talk someone down. For Ryan, I promise to do better!
